Preparing Your Laptop to Access our Law School Wireless System

 
For your laptop to connect to our wireless network reliably, it is important that you perform the following:

1. Update Your Wireless Card Driver to the Latest Version - !!!  Please note this is NOT achieved using Windows Updates!  If you are up to date on your critical updates it does not affect your wireless driver software.  To update your wireless drivers please go to your wireless card manufacturer’s support site (Intel, Broadcom, etc…) or your laptops support site (Dell, Toshiba, Sony, etc…) and search for your laptop model.  Local the wireless network card for your laptop, find the correct OS and download and apply the latest driver.  This will help tremendously as drivers older than 2008 do not understand the latest security or connective methods used by newer wireless systems.  If you need help in locating your latest wireless card drive, please contact our Lawhelpdesk for assistance.

2.  Make sure that LAW_PUBLIC is the first network listed in your preferred wireless network list.  Having SSIDs such as "Linksys" in your list can significantly slow the attachment or re-attachment of your wireless card to our network APs.

3. Make Sure that Your Windows OS is  Up-To-Date:  It is important that you complete your Windows Updates so that all known security issues are addressed.  Please turn on automatic updates on and check regularly that your system is downloading and installing updates.  Please note that completing Windows Updates DOES NOT UPDATE your WIRELESS DRIVER.

4. Install Anti-Virus/Anti-Spy Software/Update Your Virus Definitions/Run Scan: The law school provides Norton Anti-virus software free of charge to all students so if you need a copy please visit the Legal Computing Download Center and install it for free.  After downloading please run a COMPLETE SCAN to ensure that no viruses are present on your system. Install and RUN Anti-Spy Software on your laptop.  Currently we recommend Windows Defender, which is free on Microsoft's site.  Once downloaded, installed and updated please run a COMPLETE scan to clear all spyware from your PC, and verify that your last scan show no files, processes or registry entries present.

If after performing these steps your connection is stll not reliable, PLEASE VISIT TO OUR LAW HELPDESK so that we may more thoroughly examine your laptop.  By knowing specifically when and where you are experiencing connectivity issues we can better determine the cause and add to the data we submit to Cisco (especially about your brand of laptop).  We may also have specific fixes applicable to specific makes, models and OS that may help.

Also, please know that in a multi-user environment with differing laptops and wireless devices, the law school wireless system will not behave like it does at home.  Home networks are essentially virtual hard cabling, with only a few wireless devices sharing 7mb/s or better hard internet connections.  Law school wireless is capped at 2.0mb (for now), so your web experience will be slower.